The cinema in Niger grew from ethnographic documentaries in the colonial period to become one of the most active national film cultures in Francophone Africa. Filmmakers such as Oumarou Ganda, Moustapha Alassane, Mahamane Bakabé, Inoussa Ousseini and Moustapha Diop have had their work featured around the world. The Niamey African Film Meeting (rencontres du cinéma africain de Niamey RECAN) is one of the premier film events of the continent. Unlike neighboring Nigeria, with its thriving Hausa- and English-language film industry (see Nollywood), most Nigerien films are made in French and Francophone countries have been their major market, while action and light entertainment films from Nigeria or dubbed western films, fill most Nigerien theaters.

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Nigerien cinema first appeared in the colonial period. Jean Rouch, a French ethnographic filmmaker, is generally considered the father of Nigerien film. Despite arriving as a colonialist in 1941, Rouch remained in Niger after independence, and mentored a generation of Nigerien filmmakers and actors, including Damouré Zika and Oumarou Ganda.
By 1950, Rouch had made the first films set in Niger with "au pays des mages noirs" (1947), in 1948 " l'initiation à la danse des possédés" and "Les magiciens de Wanzarbé" in 1949.

Still, many of the ethnographic films produced in the colonial era by Jean Rouch and others were rejected by African film makers because in their view they distorted African realities.

During the 1950s, Rouch began to produce longer, narrative films. In 1954 he filmed Damouré Zika in "Jaguar", as a young Songhai man traveling for work to the Gold Coast.[4] Filmed as a silent ethnographic piece, Zika helped re-edit the film into a feature-length movie which stood somewhere between documentary and fiction, and provided dialog and commentary for a 1969 release. In 1957 Rouch directed in Côte d'Ivoire "Moi un noir" with the young Nigerian filmmaker Oumarou Ganda, who had recently returned from French military service in Indochina. Ganda went on to become the first great Nigerien film director and actor. By the early 1970s, Rouch, with cast, crew, and cowriting from his Nigerien collaborators, was producing full length dramatic films in Niger, such as Petit à petit ("Little by Little" : 1971) and Cocorico Monsieur Poulet ("Cocka-doodle-doo Mr. Chicken": 1974).[5]

Since the 1980s, Nigerien cinema has faded, in part due to weakening state sector financing, and in part due to the growth of lighter action and romance films, especially the Hausa language film industry of neighboring Nigeria. Niger cinema had tended toward French style art films, and in one of the world's poorest nations, public funding could no longer be justified.

In the 1980s – 1990s, Mariama Hima was one of the few women film directors in sub-Saharan Africa.

In 1994, Nigerien Producer-Director Ousmane IIbo Mahamane founded The Niamey African Film Meeting (rencontres du cinéma africain de Niamey RECAN) as a biennial festival without prizes and a center for film making and film studies. In 2006, RECAN, presented some 70 films in Niamey. Its 2005 features included "Tuwo yayi magana", the first film by the Tarbiyya- Niamey film group. Based on a novel by Abdou Ouma, it is presented in Hausa.

The first Tuareg feature film, Akounak Teggdalit Taha Tazoughai, is being released in 2014 and stars the musician Mdou Moctar.[7][8][9] It tells the story of a struggling musician from Agadez and is loosely based on Purple Rain.[10]

^Three men dramatized their real life roles in the film, and went on to become three of Nigerien cinema's first actors. See: Jean Rouch. Notes on migrations into the Gold Coast. (First report of the mission carried out in the Gold Coast from March to December, 1954) Tr. into English by P.E.O. and J.B. Heigham. Accra, (1954) OCLC 11092127 and Jean Rouch, Steven Feld. Ciné-ethnography. University of Minnesota Press, (2003) ISBN0-8166-4104-8 pp. 352–353